Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Sneak Preview, Again

I kind of had fun with the article preview last time, and My Lady of the Anticipating Smiles said she enjoyed it. So here is another sneak preview. Coming next weekend to an East African near you, some more budget talk and a little nostalgia:

"Ten years ago this would have been impossible to imagine: few of us under the previous regimes had a clue about what these parliamentarians of ours did with themselves.They were like exotic birds who migrated to roost in a mythical capital far, far away from Dar called Dodoma several times a year, where they would coo at each other in a language we weren’t likely to understand. The national budget was an even more obscure undertaking than Bunge, and something that we were happy to leave to the ones in charge. After all they supposedly knew exactly what they were doing. That must have been such a fantastic time to be a politician. Sure, you were likely poor but then you commanded respect."

Ah. Those single-party days must have been like some kind of golden past for the old cadres, eh? People bowing and scraping and "Mheshimiwa"-ring you to death everywhere you went. Nothing like these days when uncouth youth say silly things about you on the intertubes and nip at your heels in the newspapers. Damn those liberal democrats!

2 comments:

Isn't it interesting how their lives are now supposed to be open books for us to scrutinize. On the one hand it is important so we know what is happening with our tax shillings (doesn't quite sound as exotic as tax dollars) but on the other hand I'm not quite sure where we should draw the line.